Did you know Musicplay Online has a new Easter Unit AND a new Spring Unit?
Easter Egg Games with songs
Gr. 2 #79 Hide the Easter Eggs – piggyback tune
Gr. 3 #79 Hide Those Eggs – original song
1. Teach the children the song by rote. (choose the song you like best!)
2. Game Directions: Choose 3-5 students to hide Easter eggs in the classroom while the rest of the class hides eyes and sings the song. Eggs must be hidden in plain sight. (not under something or in a drawer) . The rest of the class hunts for an egg. Limit them to finding one egg per student. Choose new students to hide the eggs.
For an interesting variation that will help you assess rhythm reading, write rhythms on the eggs that you use in the game. When the child finds an egg, they bring it to you and tell you the rhythm. If you want to print/use the activity instead of making plastic egg rhythms, I’ll post these printable PDFs at
www.musicplayonline.com on Monday in the Easter Unit. If you don’t already know about Musicplayonline.com, it’s an affordable subscription website with a wealth of resources for teaching PreK-6 music. ($149.95/year for ALL grades! – all the school can use it, and students can use a student login)
Compose a word rhythm using Basket/Egg
I did this activity with my PreK classes last week. You can do this with PreK-Gr. 3. I brought two Easter baskets and two egg shakers out and made a pattern with them. This pattern is: Egg-Egg-Basket-Basket. We said and clapped the pattern. Then, I invited a child to make a new pattern. We did several new patterns, saying and clapping them. As an ear training activity, I told the children that I would clap “basket” or “egg” and they should point to what I had clapped. To my delight, even my 3 year olds could point correctly to what I’d clapped.
It’s a short jump from clapping word rhythms, to labeling one sound on a beat as “ta” and two sounds on a beat as “ti-ti” and this is what I’d do with late K or grade 1-2 students.
Easter Egg Word Chain – how to play the game!
1. When you click “start” the first egg rhythm appears. Have the students clap this rhythm several times, and ask them to remember it. Tell them that they will clap this rhythm AND the next one that appears.
2. Click on the egg rhythm, and it disappears, while a new one appears. Have the students clap rhythms one (that they can’t see) and rhythm two (that they are seeing).
Practice rhythm one and two a few times, and ask them to remember them. Tell them that they will clap both of these rhythms AND the next one that appears.
3. Click on the second egg rhythm, and it disappears, while a new one appears. Have the students clap rhythms one (that they can’t see) and rhythm two(that they can’t see) and rhythm 3 (that they are seeing).
Continue adding rhythms to the rhythm chain as far as your students can go.
Alternatively – if this is too hard for your students, just use the activity as a rhythm reading exercise. There are 8 levels of rhythm practice and there’s a cute surprise at the end!
There are 8 levels of rhythm practice. And there’s a cute surprise after reading all the rhythms.
| This Egg Shaker Matching game is one that I’ve used with K-5. K-1 students: Shake the egg and see if they can guess what’s in it. I used an interesting variety of materials in the eggs including popcorn, rice, dried peas, small screws, tums, pennies.
Gr. 2-5 students: Give each student one egg as they come in your classroom. Have them find the matching egg by listening carefully to the sounds their egg shaker makes. To make it easy to check if students have found their match, I marked the pairs — but most students don’t notice the markings the first time they do this. I also made a Key of what’s in the eggs, because it is hard to tell! |
There are many great games for Easter in musicplay! Here are notes on just a few of them:
Find the Easter Basket
Gr. 2#75 – practice dynamics, sm l while playing a hiding game
| If you use the interactive Beat and Rhythm activities for Find the Easter Basket, you’ll see that our team has now created a menu for the activities. Now you can jump right to the activity that you want to do with the students. The new Beat Chart (activity 2) is new. Turn “off” the beats you want children to put “in their heads” and they sing out loud only for the beats that are “on.” Developing audiation is fun!!! |
John the Rabbit in PreK
The game is simple and fun! Kids make a line on one side of the room. Each time they sing “Yes Ma’am” they take a little jump toward you. (You’re Farmer Brown) . When you get to the end of the song, shoo the bunnies out of the garden. Print the vegetable cards and use them in the song. Then, clap the word rhythms. I put out 4 cards on the floor. My PreK closed their eyes and I clapped “sweet potato.” They correctly identified the vegetable I’d clapped. Sweet!
Little Rabbit Foo Foo
A shout out to Dana Herro who performed this in her concert, having the students act it out. Instead of doing the fingerplay, when little Rabbit Foo Foo was hopping through the forest, they hopped.
Hurry Easter Bunny
This is a great song to practice so-mi-do. Kids love chase games and they learn the interval because they’ve sung it in the game so many times.
The Easter Unit at Musicplayonline.com also includes
– Music Match projectable (so you can teach/assess)
– Listening Glyph for Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks
– Compose an Easter Melody using s-m, mrd, or ls mrd or CDE GA. (choose the level for your students)
– Color by Note worksheet